Comments by Richard Dawkins

1. Bad Faith Awards 2009: the polls are open

Comment #433613 by Richard Dawkins on November 20, 2009 at 11:15 pm

Since the precedent of a group nomination is there in the British Chiropractic Association, how about the Taliban? The evil that they stand for outranks anything else I can think of in the world today, and the point that is relevant here is that, by the lights of their sincerely held faith, it is all good and righteous and in accordance with the will of their god.

Richard

2. Bad Faith Awards 2009: the polls are open

Comment #433421 by Richard Dawkins on November 20, 2009 at 12:09 pm

How BORING that the Pope Ratzinger is notching up the most votes. I'm not sure who I'd vote for, but I'd surely choose a less obvious candidate than the pope.

Richard

3. Richard Dawkins on the Ron Reagan Show tonight

Comment #432340 by Richard Dawkins on November 16, 2009 at 11:45 pm

There's a fly buzzing around my room. It is bound to be audible on the radio, and will be distracting for me!
Richard

4. Richard Dawkins on the Ron Reagan Show tonight

Comment #432338 by Richard Dawkins on November 16, 2009 at 11:42 pm

Is it possible to listen to it in England?

5. Richard Dawkins on the Ron Reagan Show tonight

Comment #432334 by Richard Dawkins on November 16, 2009 at 11:27 pm

I'm in bed, with the telephone by my side, struggling to stay awake! The phone call is supposed to come at midnight, British time

Richard

6. Faith groups to be key policy advisers

Comment #432143 by Richard Dawkins on November 16, 2009 at 12:58 pm

I've now read the speech by John Denham, referred to by TeapotTheist:
http://www.communities.gov.uk/speeches/corporate/churchestogether
Denham is probably well-meaning and foolish rather than actively malevolent. And it is true that the Telegraph is not a reliable source at the best of times, and Jonathan Wynne-Jones is a notoriously bad reporter. So it will be interesting to hear whether anybody who writes to Denham gets a reply, and what he says. He may be just toeing a party line, and therefore not much more blameworthy than politicians usually are

By the way, my crack about 'sucking up to Muslims' was not aimed at Denham personally so much as at the euphemistic word 'Communities', which is almost always code for 'Muslims'. It is reminiscent of the way 'Law and Order' (in America) and 'Inner Cities' (in Britain) used to be code for 'black people' (prompting Auberon Waugh's wickedly satirical remark about "Inner Cities of both sexes")

Richard

7. Faith groups to be key policy advisers

Comment #432102 by Richard Dawkins on November 16, 2009 at 9:48 am

The Times today (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6918059.ece) has an article headed "Labour gives up on 60 vulnerable seats." The Labour Party has decided not to waste money on 60 seats that they have no hope of winning at the next election, in order to pour money into other seats, which would normally have been considered safe, but which have now become vulnerable. Among the 20 formerly safe seats that have now become most highly at risk is Southampton Itchen. That is John Denham's seat. In other words, there is a good chance that John Denham could be thrown out of Parliament at the next election.

I have never voted Tory in my life, and I don't think I could bring myself to, even if the opposing candidate were John Denham. But if you live in Southampton, or close enough to get there easily, please consider canvassing against John Denham, perhaps for the Lib Dems, or another party, or just to persuade Labour voters to refrain from supporting John Denham. This could be a real chance to get politicians to wake up to the fact that there is a secular interest out there, which might just be worth considering alongside their normal sucking up to the 'Communities' (code for 'Muslim') vote. And it is a real chance to get John Denham thrown out on his ear.

Richard

8. Faith groups to be key policy advisers

Comment #432023 by Richard Dawkins on November 15, 2009 at 11:40 pm

Yes, please, you UKers, follow Richard's suggestion and give this bloke some insightful criticism.

I don't see why letters should all come from Britain. Religion is a world-wide disease, not just a British one. And some countries, such as the USA, have something to tell us about the virtues of separating religion from politics.

Richard

9. Faith groups to be key policy advisers

Comment #432020 by Richard Dawkins on November 15, 2009 at 11:32 pm

Dear Mr Denham
Why stop at 'faith groups'? Surely the following are at least as well qualified as 'faith groups' for a seat on your panels of 'policy advisers': stamp collectors, hill walkers, professional pingpong players, embroiderers, model railway buffs, ballroom dancers, trainspotters, balletomanes, bassoonists, yachtswomen, pub-quiz players, and contenders for the world record for oily rag clutching.
Richard Dawkins

10. Faith groups to be key policy advisers

Comment #431998 by Richard Dawkins on November 15, 2009 at 10:30 pm

This ridiculous man, John Denham, is the Secretary of State for "Communities". What are "Communities"? You may well ask. The simplest translation would be: "John Denham is Secretary of State for sucking up to Muslims". His website is http://www.johndenham.org.uk/
If you go there, you can discover that his eMail address is
john@johndenham.org.uk
Why not use it to send him a message?

Richard

11. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry vs. The Catholics

Comment #430518 by Richard Dawkins on November 9, 2009 at 7:21 am

I don't think Ann Widdecombe put in such a poor performance as others here have suggested. Yes, she is a professional debater, and I think that, if we could set aside her Monty Python voice, her performance, judged purely by the standards of debating skills, was not too bad. She made her case reasonably well. But this only underlines the appallingly bad case the Catholic apologists had to make. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and any decent sow would resent the comparison to the case for the RC Church. To suggest that the apologists lost this debate because of their poor debating skills is to miss the point that there simply isn't a good case to be made in favour of the proposition that the Roman Catholic Church is a force for good.

Admittedly the vote shifted dramatically from before to after the debate, but perhaps we can put that down to the audience's prior ignorance of how truly dreadful the RC Church really is. And of course Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens brilliantly showed them.

Richard

12. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry vs. The Catholics

Comment #430332 by Richard Dawkins on November 8, 2009 at 5:15 pm

She may be one of the nastiest people in British public life, but that is no reason to get her name wrong. She is Ann (no 'e') Widdecombe (no 'n').

Richard

13. The new crybaby theists

Comment #429698 by Richard Dawkins on November 5, 2009 at 4:29 pm

Terrific response by Michael Brull to the craven wingeing of Greg Craven on 'A Plague of Atheists'. It is almost impossible to believe that Greg Craven could be the vice-chancellor of a university -- until you realise that it is the Australian CATHOLIC University. Then it all kind of falls into place.

Richard

14. Human rights ruling against classroom crucifixes angers Italy

Comment #429492 by Richard Dawkins on November 4, 2009 at 6:53 pm

Forgive me for not welcoming this judgment with unalloyed joy. If I thought the motive was secularist I would indeed welcome it. But are we sure it is not pandering to 'multiculturalism', which in Europe is code for Islam? And if you think Catholicism is evil . . .

Richard

15. 'Why Evolution Is True'

Comment #429384 by Richard Dawkins on November 4, 2009 at 9:35 am

Excellent lecture, based on excellent book. Well worth listening to, even if you think you know it. Try to get this lecture widely disseminated, especially among young people and people likely to be influenced by creationist wingnuts. If you are a school teacher, or know a school teacher, try to get the lecture shown in school. Jerry is superb.

Richard

16. Special Investigation - 20th Century Killers

Comment #428334 by Richard Dawkins on October 30, 2009 at 5:33 pm

My worry is that the people who really need to get the message will be too stupid to realise that the "all in the name of atheism" at the end is satire.

Richard

17. Give us your misogynists and bigots

Comment #428122 by Richard Dawkins on October 29, 2009 at 11:22 pm

Mistaken post removed
Richard

18. Give us your misogynists and bigots

Comment #428057 by Richard Dawkins on October 29, 2009 at 7:43 pm

I've added the following to my Washington Post 'On Faith' piece:-
Note added, October 29th
Readers might be amused to see a bizarre report of this article in the London Daily Telegraph, by someone called Damian Thompson:-

Richard Dawkins's latest attack on the Catholic Church is worthy of a dribbling loony on the top of a bus. He calls the Church "the greatest force for evil in the world", "an institution where buggering altar boys pervades the culture" and describes it "dragging its skirts in the dirt and touting for business like a common pimp". (Pimps in skirts - that's a new one.) And all in The Washington Post.
The peg for this piece? The Pope's offer to make special arrangements for Anglicans converting to Rome, a matter I would have thought was none of Prof Dawkins's business. But I'm not going to bother to argue with any of his points, because these are the ravings of a man who appears to have lost all sense of proportion. Seriously: is there something wrong with him?

I didn't describe the RC Church as the greatest force for evil in the world. I said it was 'surely up there with the leaders', which is rather different. It wasn't pimps' skirts that I had in mind as dragging in the dirt but priests' skirts. The claim that Anglican church affairs are none of my business will ring hollow to any British citizen, where 26 Bishops are, by law, unelected Members of the Upper House of Parliament. Neither Mr Thompson, nor any of the Catholics who have attacked me for 'raving' or 'hate speech' etc have actually denied any of the charges that I made. The RC Church really does teach the dotty notion of transubstantiation, it really does teach that only men, not women, are capable of performing the trick, it really does tell lies about the alleged inefficacy of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, it really does promote prejudice against homosexuals, and it really does cover up the crime of sexually molesting children. If any apologist wishes to deny any of these factual claims, let them do so. Simply to hurl abuse at me is not good enough. Deny the charges or shut up.

Even more amusing than Damian Thompson's tirade is the following satire on him, published at Platitudes.org.uk

Smelly poos with knobs on to Richard Dawkins. He's a complete loony. I, on the other hand am a Catholic, with the following perfectly sensible beliefs.
1. Everything requires an explanation, including the observable universe.
2. The observable universe was created by an unobservable Invisible Magic Friend. This explains the observable universe.
3. The Invisible Magic Friend has existed for all eternity and therefore requires no explanation. This is entirely consistent with point 1.
4. The Invisible Magic Friend comes in three lumps: Father, Son and mum Holy Ghost.
5. There is an Invisible Magic Baddy called the Devil, who's constantly tempting people to do bad things and stop being Catholics.
5. Every baby is born a sinner, stained with the sin of Eve, who ate a piece of fruit on the command of the Devil, then disguised as a talking snake.
6. The Invisible Magic Friend revealed himself to a bunch of Middle Eastern Semitic tribes starting about 700 B.C.E. All the other gods of the Persians, Romans, Egyptians, Greeks, Norse and Indian were just made up. Only the god of Abraham is the real Invisible Magic Friend.
7. We were all condemned to eternal damnation by the all loving Invisible Magic Friend because of the talking snake incident and it's too good for us if you ask me.
8. The Invisible Magic Friend sent an Invisible Magic Messenger, with invisible magic white wings, called Gabriel to tell a young woman in Palestine that she was pregnant thanks to the third lump of the Invisible Magic Friend who had impregnated her with the extra chromosomes needed to conceive, and the child would be called Emmanuel, so she called him Jesus.
9. Mary's fiancé, Joseph was a bit miffed at Mary being pregnant and having to remain a virgin for the rest of her life, but she explained about the third lump of the Invisible Magic Friend so he married her anyway.
10. Jesus did all sorts of amazing things: turning water into wine, walking on water, redoing the Elisha feeding thousands trick, spitting on people to cure them, transforming into something, raising from the dead.
11. Jesus got a bit too uppity so the Romans crucified him.
12. Two days later, he rose from the dead in accordance with the prophecy that he'd rise three days later.
13. Jesus' death was actually a sacrifice of the second lump of the Invisible Magic Friend to all three lumps of the Invisible Magic Friend. This sacrifice was adequate compensation for the talking snake affair and you now only had to spend eternity in agony if, on average, you aren't terribly nice while you inhabit the observable universe or until recently, you weren't a Catholic.
14. Before going up into the sky on a cloud, Jesus said, "Peter, I'm leaving you in charge of the observable universe. Here are some magic powers."
15. Peter went to Rome and gave his magic powers to lots of other people.
16. Only people with external genitalia can have magic powers (obviously).
17. The magic powers consist of: turning ordinary water into magic water, turning ordinary oil into magic oil, forgiving people's sins by saying three Hail Marys as an alternative to eternal damnation, turning bread and wine into the flesh and blood of the second lump of the Invisible Magic Friend, consuming him, thus recreating the original sacrifice 2,000 years ago, and in the case of being top priest, being infallible. All this, is best done in the language of the Roman Empire.
18. Deliberately not having as many children as possible is a sin, unless you're one of the men with magic powers who mustn't ever touch anything hairy, wobbly or dangly, or even think about touching anything hairy, wobbly or dangly.
19. Having sex for fun is a sin.
20. When men with magic powers are discovered buggering altar boys, the appropriate action is to move them where there are some new boys and make the victims promise never to tell anyone because it was all their fault anyway, the little teasers. This turns you from just being Most Reverend into being Eminent.
21. Poofs are an inherent moral evil and a greater danger to the planet than global warming.
Thank the Invisible Magic Friend I'm not one of those dribbling loonies like Richard Dawkins.

19. Give us your misogynists and bigots

Comment #427462 by Richard Dawkins on October 28, 2009 at 12:00 am

In that light, your article makes more sense. I can see that I jumped the gun. You have my apologies. "Coward" was a totally inappropriate word.

Thank you, Twatsworth, that was gracious.
All good wishes
Richard

20. Give us your misogynists and bigots

Comment #427254 by Richard Dawkins on October 27, 2009 at 12:22 pm

Richard - an observation: on all of your previous opinion pieces in the Washington Post, they have put the question asked above the article itself in italics, without having to go look for it.

This seems to be the first time that they've neglected to do so, for whatever reason.

I don't know why they failed to do it for this question. I have written to ask them to rectify the error, and also to make it easier to locate all the answers to any given question. Meanwhile, Andrew has kindly fixed it for our two threads here (mine and Paula's). See top of page.

Richard

21. Give us your misogynists and bigots

Comment #427219 by Richard Dawkins on October 27, 2009 at 8:39 am

PS. I'm told the Washington Post DOES group together in one place all panel answers to the same question. The place for the 'Vatican Poaching' question is
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/2009/10/catholics_welcoming_anglicans/all.html
And the question does indeed head the page. But how you are supposed to FIND that page is still, to quote Churchill, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

As well as Paula and me, other panellists who have answered this particular question include George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Bishop John Shelby Spong, who delivers an attack as splendid as his name.

Richard

22. Give us your misogynists and bigots

Comment #427208 by Richard Dawkins on October 27, 2009 at 7:41 am

Thank you, Steven Mading, for pointing this out. I am a member of a panel, to which the Washington Post 'On Faith' blog sends out a weekly question. Any members of the panel who wish to then respond to the question, and they are all posted, together with the question. At least, that is what I naturally thought!

This week's solicitation was as follows:-

Panel,

Changing gears briefly today. We will publish your responses to the Hate Crimes bill question I sent yesterday, but we'd also like to get your reaction to the Vatican's suprise announcement Tuesday that it will make it easier for Anglicans to convert to Catholicism.

Here's the AP story about the announcement: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/20/AR2009102000504.html?hpid=topnews

Here's John Allen's story: http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/vatican-reveals-plan-welcome-disaffected-anglicans

Here's the question:
The Vatican is making it easier for Anglicans -- priests, members and parishes -- to convert to Catholicism. Some say this is further recognition of the substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality between the Catholic and Anglican traditions; others see it as poaching that could further divide the Anglican Communion. What do you think?

We'll publish your responses asap.

Thanks

Naturally, I answered the question on the assumption that the question itself would be published prominently above my answer. WRONG!

Paula Kirby, who is also on the panel, earlier responded to the same question, and you can see her excellent piece at http://richarddawkins.net/article,4500,Business-as-usual-for-Vatican-Enterprises-Inc,Paula-Kirby-Newsweek-On-Faith
Once again, I've just noticed that the Washington Post also bizarrely neglects to post the question above her piece, too:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/paula_kirby/2009/10/business_as_usual_for_vatican_enterprises_inc_1.html

The other weird thing I now observe is that the Washington Post nowhere seems to group together all the panel responses to any one question! How are you supposed to find them? And how is the reader supposed to know what question is being answered? In the light of this, I have slightly more sympathy for Twatsworth, though not for his abominable rudeness, for which he still has not apologised.

If I contributed to these panel questions more often, I would already have noticed the Washington Post's lamentably poor signposting and raised it with them. I shall now do so.

Richard

23. Give us your misogynists and bigots

Comment #427036 by Richard Dawkins on October 26, 2009 at 7:35 pm

So what is your real name, Twatsworth? Mine is Richard Dawkins. And did you not realise that this was a commissioned article, specifically about the Roman Catholic Church trying to steal from the Anglicans, with not the smallest connection to Islam? If so, I shall accept your apology.

24. Give us your misogynists and bigots

Comment #427027 by Richard Dawkins on October 26, 2009 at 7:25 pm

He does not even ALLUDE to the mind-bogglingly greater misogyny of Islam. Just incredible.

And precisely what has Islam got to do with the attempt by the Roman Catholic Church to steal recruits from the Anglican Church, which was the subject of the Washington Post's 'On Faith' Question? I have frequently inveighed against the evils of Islam, and I do so under my own name. You, Twatsworth, choose to hide your identity under a pseudonym. Who is the coward?
Richard

25. Give us your misogynists and bigots

Comment #427010 by Richard Dawkins on October 26, 2009 at 7:01 pm

Also said on 'Have I got news for you' last week

What was also said?
Richard

26. Celebrity atheists expose their hypocrisy

Comment #426668 by Richard Dawkins on October 25, 2009 at 11:23 pm

They really are getting desperate, aren't they? What a truly fatuous, unoriginal, ignorant piece: ignorant of the books he is criticizing, ignorant of the many refutations of the identical criticisms that have already been published many times, ignorant of the (non) religious views of Einstein and Hawking . . .

Why do reputable papers like the Sydney Morning Herald publish such ill-informed, third-rate tosh? Could it be because they are anxious to advertise their 'respect' for Judaism and other religions?

Richard

27. Business as usual for Vatican Enterprises, Inc.

Comment #426492 by Richard Dawkins on October 25, 2009 at 11:47 am

Lovely short piece by Euan Ferguson in the Observer today:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/25/euan-ferguson-women-shortlists

All roads lead to Rome for Anglican women-haters

Three people I feel a tiny bit sorry for. Nick Griffin, who everyone wanted to be at least clever, and then cleverly beaten, but who looked, instead, like a thick, sweating, failed, fat vole.

A man called Hide Saito, owner of a karaoke bar in Tokyo, who on Wednesday heard My Way for the 25,000th time (Clive James, as so often, had it nailed, many years ago in this very paper, when he pointed out that the only person who truly got away with that lyric was Sid Vicious).

And the poor, self-pimping Pope, who announced midweek that Anglicans would now be welcome as converts.

I don't want to come over all Richard Dawkins here. (Actually, I would love to, if only I was cleverer.) But surely it says much, and none of it too healthy, about modern organised religion when you can just open the knees of your cassock on a whim and pull in an estimated 1,000 new priests, from a different church, the Church of England, just because they don't like women.

I may be a touch hazy on some niceties of the theology. It's being said that His Holiness is terribly keen to unite all Christians, urgently. (So much so that he accepts Holocaust-deniers.) But, standing away from the acres of text written about it all, the lamentations and the justifications, it strikes me as incredibly simple.

There is a church, based in Rome, which believes in something or other. There is another church, based in Canterbury, which believes in sort of the same, but not quite so much, or at least not quite so… Mediterraneanly, and with fewer rules and odours, but also, presumably faintly frustratingly, fewer get-out clauses. For centuries, the two have been at war, often literally. Because each side believes, truly believes, that they are the only ones to interpret the Bible correctly, and what it "says" about, for instance, marriage, celibacy, equality, women, individual rights, conscience, free will, penitence and whether the chunk of cake is literal or figurative.

And then – da nan! Suddenly, it is utterly butterly OK for the papal team to throw open their doors and invite in the Anglicans. The rules weren't, it turns out, so much rules as… suggestions. Faint, shadowy guidelines. Cobwebs, really. Hints. Nudges. Nothing to do with God, in fact. All probably taken out of context. Even more shamingly, the Anglicans who don't like women priests are reportedly rushing to put on the new strip.

Yes, I'm being fabulously reductive here. Go on then, fatwah me. Or is that the third bunch?

28. Transworld Acquires A New Book By Richard Dawkins

Comment #426477 by Richard Dawkins on October 25, 2009 at 10:05 am

WHAT IS A RAINBOW, REALLY?
hope they think of a better title

Of course that is not my title. It was just the title of the sample CHAPTER that Dave McKean and I showed to the publishers. Somebody, somewhere, decided to make that the 'working' title of the whole book. As for the real title, that will require much discussion and agonizing. Suggestions welcome.
Richard

29. From Delusion To Denial

Comment #426147 by Richard Dawkins on October 23, 2009 at 6:57 pm

A decent review and I agree that Dawkin's habit of dropping in cultural and (especially) political references can be a bit annoying.

But possibly not so annoying as the common habit of dropping an apostrophe into the middle of a name that happens to end in 's'?
Richard

30. 'Good Without God,' Atheist Subway Ads Proclaim

Comment #425052 by Richard Dawkins on October 19, 2009 at 8:53 pm

This is indeed utterly excellent. Many congratulations to all concerned.

Richard

31. From the Heavens or From Nature: The Origins of Morality

Comment #424341 by Richard Dawkins on October 16, 2009 at 11:28 pm

"Take a step back. It's exactly the same problem."

That has to be one tof the stupidest things I have ever heard. It's not a question of morality. It's basic highschool physics.

Throwing the switch can realistically be expected to have an effect on the train. Pushing a 300 pound mass (of anything!) in front of a train that probably weights at least TEN THOUSAND pounds and may be going at 20 or 40 mph will not realistically affect the train.

For goodness sake, it's a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT! You might as well say Einstein was wrong because trains can't travel near the speed of light.

Richard

32. It's not a theory, stupid

Comment #423558 by Richard Dawkins on October 13, 2009 at 1:55 pm

It is a special pleasure for me to see this review. Dr Madhav Gadgil is a distinguished evolutionary scientist, who made his name in the United States and has now returned to his native India.

Richard

33. Iraqis Shocked as Atheism Creeps

Comment #423326 by Richard Dawkins on October 12, 2009 at 7:03 pm

Make what you will of this fact, recently told me by Josh. Of all countries in the world, the one where RD.net achieves its highest ranking, in terms of numbers of visits, is . . . Iraq!

Just to clarify, that doesn't mean we are the highest ranking site in Iraq! It means that if RD.net ranks all the countries in the world to find the country where we hit our own maximum popularity, Iraq comes out on top.

I have no idea what interpretation to put on this fact, and simply pass it on for your consideration.

Richard

34. The Angry Evolutionist

Comment #420371 by Richard Dawkins on September 30, 2009 at 12:13 pm

The paper edition of this extract, in Newsweek, contained a truly appalling error in the 'pull quote', the enlarged extract (alleged) which such magazines usually employ to highlight what the sub-editor thinks is a key point. The following explanation, submitted to Newsweek by my American publisher Hilary Redmon, explains:-

Last week’s article, THE ANGRY EVOLUTIONIST featured highlighted text that said the following: “People came from monkeys via frogs and fish, but that doesn’t mean we should expect to find a ‘fronkey.’ Evolutionary change doesn’t happen overnight.” This is both incorrect and a misquotation of the article. People do not “come from” monkeys. Nor are monkeys descended from frogs or fish. Monkeys share a common ancestor with frogs as every species on earth shares an ancestor with every other one. The passage the quote refers to actually identifies this very sentence as “the silliest of all these ‘missing link’ challenges.”

Richard

35. The Great Bus Mystery

Comment #419573 by Richard Dawkins on September 27, 2009 at 10:10 pm

As a great fan of P G Wodehouse's Wooster and Jeeves novels, I really liked this -- but why the name changes?

Need you ask? Lawyers, of course.
Richard.

36. The Great Bus Mystery

Comment #419399 by Richard Dawkins on September 27, 2009 at 8:03 am

My Wodehouse pastiche is only one of 42 contributions to The Atheists's Guide to Christmas, edited by the wonderful Ariane Sherine, instigator of the Great Bus Campaign. Please give the book to all your religious friends for Christmas, to show them that, be they ever so strident, atheists have a sense of humour. It's a lovely book.

Richard

37. The Great Bus Mystery

Comment #419297 by Richard Dawkins on September 26, 2009 at 6:40 pm

scrump verb trans & intrans. colloq. (orig. dial.) Steal (fruit) from orchards or gardens.

Shorter Oxford Dictionary

38. Interview: Richard Dawkins

Comment #417953 by Richard Dawkins on September 22, 2009 at 10:57 am

I was taken aback by the sheer, gratuitous spitefulness of this report when I saw it this morning, so I went back to see what I had thought about the interview at the time. I found this email, written to a friend immediately after the interview on 18th August:-

Re: How was your interview?
18 August 2009 11:35:43 GMT 01:00

Well, she was rather irritating. Very little about TGSOE, almost all about religion despite my protests. I can see this is going to be the standard pattern of interviews: ignore TGSOE and interview about TGD instead.

I was disappointed because, only this morning, PZ's morning offering included strong praise of Catherine Deveny, so I was looking forward to meeting her although I was puzzled about the Australian connection: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

It turned out that this one, Catherine Deveney, from Scotland on Sunday was completely different, not the same woman at all, and rather stupid. I tried to be nice to her, but it got hard at times. I can tell it is going to be a hostile write-up. If they send somebody religious, that is what they are going to get, and there is not a lot I can do about it.

I’m sorry I seem to have inadvertently made it clear to her that I realised how stupid she was (I’m amazed that her Editor hasn’t spotted it). Just look at what she says (and said at the time to me) about the ‘miracle’ of Fatima!

Richard

39. Richard Dawkins on The Late Late Show, 18.09.09

Comment #417294 by Richard Dawkins on September 20, 2009 at 9:45 am

Do you think he actually read 'The Greatest Show on Earth' at all?

No, I am sure he didn't. I don't really blame him for that. These TV hosts have a lot to cope with, and they can't really be expected to read everybody's book. His show is mostly a populist entertainment. The same night I was on, they had a competition, for which the prize was a paid holiday in Australia. Competitors had to phone in, from all over Ireland, giving the answer to one question.

Which is correct?
1. Sydney Opera House
2. Sydney Opera Tent
3. Sydney Opera Park
If that is the level of show Tubridy hosts, you can't really blame him for failing to read a book.
Richard

40. Richard Dawkins on The Late Late Show, 18.09.09

Comment #417290 by Richard Dawkins on September 20, 2009 at 9:14 am

It wasn't really an ambush. At least not an ambush like the real ambush that the same man, Ryan Tubridy, laid for me a couple of years ago on Irish radio. I was expecting a straight radio interview with him. Without warning, on the air, he sprang on me a 'guest': some sort of religious nut with a loud voice, who shouted at the top of it like D'Souza or Boteach, not letting me get a word in edgeways and constantly interrupting me. Tubridy did nothing to stop him, and it was a real ambush because I was not told in advance that anybody else would be on the show.

In the case of the Late Late Show, it was not an ambush, because I was told in advance that Tubridy would go to one member of the audience for a counter view.

I thought the priest in the audience was a very nice man. Moreover, he had no quarrel with The Greatest Show on Earth, but Tubridy was not interested in talking about The Greatest Show on Earth anyway. He was clearly hell bent on devoting the interview to the subject matter of The God Delusion. I anticipated this, and argued at length with the woman who briefed Tubridy, both on the telephone and in the green room. She insisted that the subject matter of The God Delusion would make more entertaining television.

Richard

41. St Therese of Lisieux: come out, atheists, and fight

Comment #416684 by Richard Dawkins on September 18, 2009 at 10:16 am

The veteran British journalist Simon Jenkins has a characteristically witty piece on St Therese's pieces, in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/17/st-therese-relics-wormwood-scrubs

Richard

42. Unbelievable: From Atheism to Christian Faith

Comment #416655 by Richard Dawkins on September 18, 2009 at 7:33 am

My strong inclination is to let this appalling thread die now, forthwith, while Robertson has the last word.

Richard

43. WHERE DOES EVOLUTION LEAVE GOD?

Comment #416163 by Richard Dawkins on September 17, 2009 at 11:23 am

191. Comment #414981 by Steve Zara on September 14, 2009 at 3:04 pm

Ranked as excellent. But only because 'superb' wasn't one of the available options. :-)

Yes indeed, truly excellent.
Richard

44. 'The Greatest Show on Earth' debuts at #1 on the Sunday Times Bestseller List!

Comment #415689 by Richard Dawkins on September 16, 2009 at 10:00 am

Anyway, according to The Bookseller, Richard has just been knocked off the number 1 spot in hardback non fiction by that dastardly Jamie Oliver.

Jamie Oliver was always way ahead in the Bookseller list. But the Sunday Times and the Observer tabulate cookery books, and fiction, separately from non-fiction, which is why The Greatest Show on Earth was, and still is, Number 1 in the nonfiction lists of both those Sunday newspapers, exactly as shown in the list posted above.

Richard

45. Unbelievable: From Atheism to Christian Faith

Comment #415683 by Richard Dawkins on September 16, 2009 at 9:47 am

Somebody has called my attention to Robertson's legal threat. If Richard Morgan has also seen it, he will surely be rueing the day he ever met Robertson. If anybody here is in private contact with Richard M, it would be a kindness to warn him. After that, I presume it won't be long before he moves on to his next religion. Perhaps a nicer one such as Jainism or the Quakers?

By the way, now that I am here, when I said the broadcast was stupefyingly boring I should have excepted Ed Turner, who was certainly not boring. The trouble is, you have to sit through a lot of other stuff before you get to him and I suspect that most people wouldn't have the patience.

Richard

46. AC Grayling: Derren Brown's Lotto stunt was a trick too far

Comment #415659 by Richard Dawkins on September 16, 2009 at 8:41 am

This article is not up to Anthony Grayling's usual high standard. He seems to assume that his readers watched two television performances by Derren Brown. I didn't watch either, and I would guess that the same applies most of Grayling's readers. Therefore, although Grayling's exposition of the general methods of conjurers was enlightening, his discussion of Derren Brown's lottery stunt was incomprehensible. Before reading the explanation of a phenomenon, the reader needs to be told what the phenomenon itself is!

It would seem that several of our posters here did see Mr Brown's act. I wonder whether you might do the rest of us a favour (including those who don't live in Britain, of course) by telling us what you saw, and therefore what needs explaining.

Many thanks
Richard

47. Unbelievable: From Atheism to Christian Faith

Comment #415423 by Richard Dawkins on September 15, 2009 at 6:39 pm

It would not have been my wish to give David Robertson a free platform here, and he certainly has no right to use a provocative phrase like 'seen fit to'. But since it has now unfortunately happened, I think he should be allowed to post here without being trolled. The problem with trolls usually is that they derail threads which, without them, would have developed nicely into an interesting conversation. Since this thread was never going to become an interesting conversation anyway, I see no problem with Robertson posting here, and there should be no reason to troll him.

One more thing, though. I have listened to the audio at the top of the page (it is STUPEFYINGLY boring, by the way, but that is an aside). Everything about Richard Morgan sounds pathetically weak and vulnerable, and I suspect that he is being ruthlessly exploited. I hope people will be polite anyway, but I especially hope Richard Morgan will not be subjected to unduly unkind remarks. As with the unfortunate Antony Flew, it is best to reserve criticism for the exploiter rather than the exploitee.

Or you might prefer, as I would, to ignore the thread altogether.

Richard

48. The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Comment #415240 by Richard Dawkins on September 15, 2009 at 9:56 am

If you want to satirize an author, you have to pick on some feature (or features) of his style and poke fun at it. A good satire of my writing could find plenty of things to pick on. You could dig at my irrelevant digressions, often in footnotes, which some might think pedantic, such as my diatribe against 'Beijing' on page 184 of TGSOE. Or there's my habit of sticking in personal anecdotes, which some might think self-indulgent, such as my occasional verse quotations, or my story about learning Boyle's Law at school (footnote on page 366). Or you could satirize the very idea of the selfish gene, as the philosopher Anthony Kenny did with a witty exposition on how the letter 'e' must be a very selfish letter because it is so ubiquitous in English prose. Or you could satirize my occasional purple passages, which might well be judged over-the-top, such as the following from Climbing Mount Improbable:

Mount Improbable rears up from the plain, lofting its peaks dizzily to the rarefied sky. The towering, vertical cliffs of Mount Improbable can never, it seems, be climbed. Dwarfed like insects, thwarted mountaineers crawl and scrabble along the foot, gazing hopelessly at the sheer, unattainable heights. They shake their tiny, baffled heads and declare the brooding summit forever unscalable.
Our mountaineers are too ambitious. So intent are they on the perpendicular drama of the cliffs, they do not think to look round the other side of the mountain. There they would find not vertical cliffs and echoing canyons but gently inclined grassy meadows, graded steadily and easily towards the distant uplands.

Occasionally, these purple passages descend into what some might consider mawkish sentimentality, like this from page 189 of TGSOE:

At the age of three and a half, the Taung child was eaten by an eagle. We know this because damage marks to the eye sockets of the fossil are identical to marks made by modern eagles on modern monkeys as they rip out their eyes. Poor little Taung child, shrieking on the wind as you were borne aloft by the aquiline fury, you would have found no comfort in your destined fame, two and a half million years on, as the type specimen of Australopithecus africanus. Poor Taung mother, weeping in the Pliocene.

Surely a truly witty satirist could make something of any or all of these? John Crace just seems to miss the target altogether. It isn't enough just to elicit the response, "Ah, I recognize that this is attempting to be satire, therefore I'd better laugh." It actually needs to be funny! It actually needs to hit the target in question, not some other target 100 yards off to one side.

Richard

49. The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Comment #415211 by Richard Dawkins on September 15, 2009 at 7:47 am

Ahem.... *looking down at the ground and shuffling my feet*

I am so sorry, I didn't mean it to come across as a put-down of you. I guess I was just momentarily irritable because of Crace's inept attempt at satire (I'd love to be satirized if it hit the target). Anyway, I should have made it clear that the part that amused you wasn't word-for-word what I wrote, which was:-

The cerebral cortex of a mammal is a sheet of grey matter, wrapped around the outside of the brain. Getting brainier partly consists in increasing the area of the sheet. This could be done by increasing the total size of the brain, and of the skull that houses it. But there are downsides to having a big skull. It makes it harder to be born, for one thing. As a result, brainy mammals contrive to increase the area of the sheet while staying within limits set by the skull, and they do it by throwing the whole sheet into deep folds and fissures. This is why the human brain looks like a wrinkled walnut, and the brains of dolphins and whales are the only ones to rival ours for wrinkliness.

Richard

50. The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Comment #415195 by Richard Dawkins on September 15, 2009 at 6:00 am

I found this line to be clever as well:

Brainy mammals contrive to increase the area of their grey matter within the confines of the skull – hence the wrinkles in the human brain.

But why is this line satire, since it's what I actually wrote? And it is not even mine, but a biological commonplace.

I looked at his attempt at satirizing Karen Armstrong, and it misses her by a mile. Does he ever come close to hitting his target? Does he ever come close to recognizable satire? I mean, if you wanted to satirize my style, couldn't you do a better job?

Richard